Switching to HFT crypto company?
Thinking of joining my friend’s 5 person high-frequency trading crypto company, as a “Trade Support Engineer” — still trying to figure out exactly what this role would entail.
I would be employee #6. They would be offering me ~$140k in SF. I currently make $130k at a startup in Virginia, but have an interview with a public non-prestigious Bay Area company that could offer me $250k TC.
I’m a product designer by trade and have zero coding skills, other than basic HTML/CSS stuff. Everyone else at the HFT firm has CS degrees, some come from Stanford and Princeton — it’s a bit intimidating.
Part of me thinks this is an exciting opportunity to try something new and join a stellar team from which I might be able to learn from. Another part of me thinks I’ll just get stuck doing shitty work with no potential for growth since I can’t code.
Thoughts?
YoE: 4 years
comments
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Also, gemini will never be a good exchange because it's hosted in the USA. Any exchange in the USA is trash because that means it needs to do kyc aml and is regulated. Any regulation will always cut into profits and deter retail traders.
Going from barebones tcp to websockets is kinda a big difference in both performance and flexibility at the unique scale of hft. But there are many other infra issues to take into account other than just the transport protocol you’re sending orders with.
EDIT
If you check out Alameda Research’s website they actually specifically point out most of their trading is in the middle frequency timescale space.
Source: I know people who have worked in similar roles. It was not exciting, to say the least.
Just set the expectation that you want to be able to code, not handle customer support issues.
You’re not getting paid much so the learning should be great.